The present invention relates generally to a discarded industrial product recycling system. More particularly, the invention is concerned with a system for controlling or managing transfers of discarded industrial products, works of disassembling the same and pertinent processing or treatment thereof and assortment of component parts resulting from the disassembling. Hereinafter, the industrial product will also be referred to as the manufactured article or simply as the article only for convenience of the description.
Heretofore, in the recycling of the discarded industrial products, importance is primarily put on the treatments/processings such as shredding or crushing and assortment of metallic pieces for the purpose of recovering metals such as iron, copper, aluminum and the like. In recent years, however, increase of recycle ratio and pertinent disposal of harmful materials and substances are considered as important problems to be solved from the viewpoint of protection of the global environment (planetism). Under the circumstances, in the factories for disposal of discarded articles and wastes, processings relating to the disassembling is gaining more and more importance in addition to the processings involved in the shredding or crushing. With the disposal of the discarded industrial products in which importance is put on the disassembling, recycling of materials, for example, recycling of plastics can be promoted by removing positively harmful materials/substances and assorting accurately and correctly the parts resulting from the disassembling. However, the discarded industrial products undergoing the disposal processing cover great varieties of articles, component parts and materials. Accordingly, disposal of the manufactured articles requires pertinent assortment of the articles themselves and the component parts as well as the pertinent treatments proper to the individual articles. At present, there arise many cases where the cost involved in the disposal of a discarded article (industrial product) is to be burdened by the discarder (i.e., person who discharges the article for disposal as the discard). Accordingly, it is desirable that information concerning the date and the place at which the discarded article was disposed of can be given to the discarder.
As a typical one of the discarded industrial product recycling systems, there can be mentioned, for example, a discarded article recycling system disclosed in JP-A-7-334583. In this system, there are employed an article ID (identifier) reading unit and an article information/data storage unit. In the article information/data storage unit, an article database(s) is stored. Thus, by reading the ID information from the article of concern with the aid of an article ID input unit, processing/treatment of the discarded industrial product can be carried out efficiently by making use of the article database. More specifically, information affixed to the manufactured article concerned is read or alternatively corresponding information is inputted through a keyboard or the like means when the information can not be read directly from the article, whereon the processing is performed on the basis of the input information by referencing the article database. However, in practical applications, the discarded article handled actually carries scarcely useful information. Besides, a great difficulty is encountered in reading the information even with the present-day techniques. Additionally, preparation or structurization of the article database is very difficult because the articles of a same class are manufactured by various makers (manufacturers), new products have been developed for sales one after another, and because the manufactured articles are very abundant in respect to the species or sorts.
As mentioned above, in the discarded industrial product recycling system, there arise many cases where the cost involved in the disposal of the discarded article is to be burdened by the person who discharged that article, i.e., the discarder. Accordingly, it is necessary to manage or control the transfer routes along which the discarded article is handled by recording, e.g. the manufacturer or maker name of that article, the model or type thereof, the reception date, the name of person responsible for the disposal and the date of the disposal. Furthermore, upon disposal of the article, it is required to decide which of the shredding-relevant route and the disassembling-relevant route is to be selected. In the processing directed primarily to the disassembling, assortment of the component parts has to be carried out properly in order to realize the reuse of the component parts, removal of harmful materials/substances recycling or reuse of materials/substances, etc. in dependence on the statuses of the discarded industrial products. In conjunction with the assortment of the disassembled parts (i.e., parts resulting from the disassembling), improvement of accuracy or correctness of the assortment as well as increase of the treatment speed is demanded in order to reduce the cost involved in the disposal while ensuring purity of the materials and substances acquired as the valuables. In particular, in the discarded industrial products, box-like plastic casings or housings are ordinarily used. Accordingly, in order to allow plastics to be reused as a raw material, it is indispensable to carry out the assortment such that plastic materials of high quality can be obtained on a sort-by-sort basis. In order to realize such processing in the practical applications, data required for the processing thereof have to be made available accurately and correctly for each of the manufactured articles. Additionally, in order to enhance the processing or treatment rate, transfer as well as processing of the relevant information should be automatized to a possible maximum extent.